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Relax: Digital TV Now Looks Certain to be Delayed

January 20, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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There is little question now that the digital TV deadline will get delayed. Instead of Feb. 17, broadcast stations will have until June 12 under the leading proposal in Congress.

Congress seems anxious for the delay, President Obama has supported it, and the few pockets of industry opposition are melting. Telecom giant Verizon reversed itself and now supports the date change. Verizon won an auction for some of the spectrum that will be freed by moving TV broadcasts to more efficient digital signals.

One opponent remains in Qualcomm, which had bought some of the spectrum for its MediaFlo system that transmits TV to cellphones. This from Qualcomm (via Wireless and Mobile News):

These new transmitters will allow Qualcomm to launch MediaFLO in approximately 15 major markets across the country and to expand the existing MediaFLO coverage footprint in approximately 25 other markets. These new transmitters will enable Qualcomm to bring the MediaFLO service to over 40 million people who are not served today

Does anyone care? TV on cellphones has been slow to take off in this country. So it seems highly unlikely that Qualcomm has much leverag to stall this stall.

Tags:: technology,; television

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ATSC was a standard that was created to save the Zenith Television Company and was bought out by LG in South Korea. The other standard in Japan and elsewhere similar to QAM cable was the solution to close range muktipath and to make incompatible to other places in the world like DVD zoning. Besides, the range they assumed for the new lower power transmission levels being sent as assumed the same is way out of whack compared to before.
Was a Buddy involved the decision making process before the standard was enacted? Enjoy and have fun in Obamaland while it's around. Bush and his drunk buddies have left.
Thanks for trying out a unique expenriment and Goodday.

Tim Hortini of VT 9:19AM January 27, 2009

Some people haven't had enough time to prepare for the transition? What planet are they living on? Stop babying these people - it's watering down the gene pool.
Also, with the additional funds Nancy Pelosi just requested, we will be spending $2 BILLION to help rabbit-ear people convert to DTV. What nonsense. When states are cutting funding for healthcare services, education, public safety (and the list goes on), there HAVE to be better things to spend $2 billion on.

Steve of ME 12:22PM January 22, 2009

I am a broadcast engineer, and I have watched the progress toward HDTV and DTV for some time. I was at one of the first stations to participate in the early attempts at HDTV. That was the analog HDTV, not the new ATSC based HDTV. ALthough I am not a fan of the over compression that some stations have done to cram multiple channels into the ATSC channel, I am glad we did not go with the analog solution.
The previous comment was correct about the US choosing the wrong standard. I watched the debate play out in the tech journals, and the superiority of the COFDM system. But, it was "not invented here." And, the entrenched entities would not have made as much money through royalties. Therefore at almost the last minute, our 8-VSB system was adopted. This choice meant we had much more difficulty in mobile reception. We don't have the smooth fallback the COFDM could have afforded. COFDM can take interference on several of its subfrequencies and still deliver a usable signal. 8-VSB relies on some serious adaptive filtering to get nearly the same result.
So, we have what we have. I have been viewing ATSC DTV from fixed location over the air since 2001, and with a good antenna I have had good results. I've even had reception using a particularly good receiver of a station over 65 miles away. Nonetheless, I know better than to try and get reception in a moving vehicle in a metropolitan area. That poor filter can't adapt fast enough to maintain a good lock.

Karl of WI 4:45PM January 21, 2009

Relax: Digital TV Now Looks Certain to be Delayed

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